A Love Stamp Tradition Reimagined

When James Yang was asked to create art for the 2026 Love stamps, he was thrilled by the assignment and began brainstorming immediately. But after considering a wide range of concepts, he found himself committed to a fond and familiar Love stamp motif, one he could reimagine in his own distinctive style.

The award-winning children’s book illustrator says he was intrigued by the unique design challenge of conveying the greatest of concepts in the smallest of spaces. “First I did a bunch of thumbnails, random ideas which could work for the idea of love. Eventually I narrowed down the sketches to metaphors for couples, and birds became an inspiration.”

As Yang knew, birds have long been a popular subject on U.S. stamps, and Love stamps in particular have featured our feathered friends as fond symbols of companionship and affection since 1990. But birds had also been winging their way into Yang’s work for quite a while, as his own delightful books can attest.

At the time, he was busy working on Bus! Stop!, a book for children under three that features two birds throughout the storyline. Published in 2018 and reissued as a board book in 2025, the book was named a “standout new picture book” by the New York Times, and its birds are recurring visual cues that enhance the story of a child who misses his bus but learns that trying something new can be fun. Yang’s acclaimed children’s book Stop! Bot!, the 2020 Geisel award winner for most distinguished American book for beginning readers, also featured colorful birds who look on as the unusual residents of an apartment building try to stop a child’s toy robot from floating away. He’s quick to point out that beneath their brightly colored whimsy, the birds he depicts are reflections of deep and varied artistic influences.

“I’m a big fan of mid-century design and love the rendering of birds by Charles and Ray Eames,” Yang says, recalling the husband-and-wife design team honored with their own pane of stamps in 2008. “I had been looking at children’s book artists of the era, and I had also recently seen a series of Japanese children’s illustrations with birds.”

To create the stamp art, Yang followed a process similar to the one he uses to illustrate his books. After retracing and scanning his initial sketches, he applies his Apple Pencil to an iPad to draw certain elements in layers, which he can then re-size, move, and otherwise play with to achieve the eye-catching effect he has in mind. “I like to keep the brushes simple so they don’t overwhelm the final art,” he explains.

The 2026 Love stamps are Yang’s first work for the Postal Service, but he has long had an eye for stamps, so he understood from the beginning that designing multiple stamps that appear alongside each other requires extra attention to composition and color.

“The final step was looking at the stamps together and tweaking colors to make sure they both stood out individually and worked together as a series,” he says.

Yang’s final art features pairs of stylized birds in a colorful world in which hearts appear, like love itself, in sweet and surprising ways. His knack for storytelling is evident on all four stamps. Whether the bird couples on these stamps are exploring branches adorned with hearts, offering a heart-shaped flower as a token of affection, pecking at hearts that fall like spring petals, or nesting under a heart-shaped moon, their behavior sends a universal message: that togetherness marked by small, thoughtful gestures is the essence of a true and loving bond.